The original “God Bless Our Vacuous Slogans” ribbon magnet decal. It’s a timeless message that never goes out of fashion, no matter what your political leanings may be. If you send me a postcard (with your address, please!) I’ll happily send you one or two of ‘em:

If your postcard is a nice one, I’ll add its front to the Postcards archive. If you send me a photo of your magnet in action, I’ll add it to the Sightings photo archive. If you spot a reference to the magnet on the Internet or in print, please let me know and I’ll put it here, too.

Spread the word! Participate in the genesis of a viral meme. Get a free magnet now, or copy the above design and make your own. I hereby submit the whole notion to the public domain.

Background

The freeway ribbon magnet wars

First, there was the post-911 appearance on automobile bumpers and tailgates of über-patriotic jingoist slogans, epitomized by the timelessly vapid God Bless Our Troops. Then there was the inevitable counter-attack from a more inclusive and pacifist camp: God Bless the Whole World. The battle lines in the ribbon magnet war had been drawn. We all endured months of silent dueling on the highways of America, where slogans like Freedom Isn’t Free duked it out with Who Would Jesus Bomb? We witnessed Bush Lied, People Died butting heads with Right or Wrong, Support our President. The intelligence of political discourse had sunk to a new low. By 2004 many drivers, tiring of these simple-minded and polarizing slogans, sought comic relief from the grim realities of a disastrous war by opening an entirely new front, spearheaded by the instant classic I Support More Troops Than You.

In March 2005, I launched my own counter-counter insurgency: God Bless Our Vacuous Slogans, a self-referential statement that, by rejecting itself, rejects all attempts to conduct meaningful dialogue through accessorizing one’s automobile. I designed a simple ribbon magnet (above) and printed up a few hundred of them. I also launched the website godblessourslogans.com (now inactive; it redirects to this page). I’ve been giving the ribbons away free ever since.

An experiment in meme formation

What does it take to start a movement? How easy is it to deliberately introduce a cultural meme that develops a self-replicating viral life of its own? The medium of the ribbon magnet seems an ideal vehicle for exploring this question: the slogan is simple to grasp, it’s reasonably harmless, it tends to make (some) people laugh, the ribbon is relatively cheap to produce, and both the ribbon and its message are easily shared with others.

So in March 2005 I put two magnets on my car (one on the driver’s side roof, suitably angled for the benefit of passing SUVs) and began quietly planting them at strategic locations in and around Davis Square. I set myself some basic guidelines:

1. Respect the law. Despite a color scheme that positively begs for these magnets (see photo at right), it’s not OK to put these magnets on MBTA buses.
2. Do not intentionally harm or offend. This means, for example: Do not apply these magnets to someone’s car without the owner’s permission.
3. Droplift in moderation. It’s sufficient to hide just one of them inside a shop’s rack of “God Bless the USA” magnets.
4. Be nice. This isn’t about making anyone mad. It’s about (a) gently poking fun at our collective tendency towards mindless mass delusion and (b) observing meme formation at work.

I sent magnets to a handful of sympathetic friends across the country (plus a few in Europe). I sent a dozen more to a well-connected friend in Southern California, who promptly distributed them among his own friends. Although the magnets received a hearty laugh from friends, only a few actually dared put them on their cars.

To gauge meme-formation, every week or so I’d Google the phrase “God bless our vacuous slogans” (and “‘God bless our vacuous slogans’ OR godblessslogan” in Google Images) to look for hints of viral contagion.

Critical mass?

In August 2005 I got the first Google hit. An editorial had appeared in Norman, Oklahoma, in the University of Oklahoma’s Oklahoma Daily (”‘God bless our empty slogans’ on your bumper”; see Sightings). The idea appeared to be catching on.

But in the months that followed, the ribbon made only a few brief appearances on the internet (see Sightings. Growth was barely linear — a far cry from the exponential growth that is the hallmark of the rise of a successful meme. Clearly it would take more than a single editorial in a local newspaper to achieve criticality.

Oh dear.

In anticipation of Open Studios ‘06 I ordered 500 more magnets. But upon opening the box a few days before the big weekend, I immediately saw that something had gone terribly wrong: the printers had switched my order with someone else’s.

I’m sending lots of thoughts of metta (goodwill) to Kansas or Texas or wherever my magnets ended up. I can’t imagine that the person expecting POW-MIA ribbons would be too pleased with mine.

Then, in November 2006, during the Brickbottom/Joy Street Open Studios, I offered free ribbon magnets to my studio visitors. About 100 ribbons were snapped up over the weekend — by far the largest single infusion of these ribbons into the cultural milieu to date.

As of March, 2007 there is no sign of any further spread, although I continue to hand out one or two ribbons each week to visitors.

Stay tuned…

Postcards (send me yours!)

080407 :: Virginia
080407 :: Illinois	080301 :: Illinois

061216 :: Oklahoma

060502 :: Pennsylvania

060207 :: Massachusetts

Sightings (send me yours!)

Internet appearances

• 051121: Disinfotainment Today (issue 174). (Scroll down between “The Case Against Evolution” and “Answers to Last Week’s Stupid Celebrity Question.”)

• 050822: Oklahoma Daily article by David Shook (” ‘God bless our empty slogans’ on your bumper”). When I inquired of the author as to how he came upon the magnet, he told me :

  I got your ribbon from a friend who got it from a Thai Buddhist retreat (from a monk) in San Diego.

  This is the first documented case of the ribbon passing through three generations (from me to a friend, to another friend, to yet another friend).

• 050507: richard.blumberg.org. This is the first documented case of the ribbon appearing on the Internet (apart from godblessourslogans.com).

• 050315: godblessourslogans.com (inactive; now redirects to jtbullitt.com). This was the first Internet appearance of the phrase “God bless our vacuous slogans.”

Cars

080329 :: Somerville, MA

080321 :: Somerville, MA

080109 :: Pennsylvania

070207 :: Somerville, MA

050515 :: Ohio

me